Chambers is the general contractor for the Rogue Valley Manor Healthcare expansion, which will include one level of skilled nursing care and one level of residential care.

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When working with Eugene, Ore.-based Chambers Construction, clients can consider their projects as good as done, even during the pre-planning stages, the company says. “We want to make [our clients’] projects an absolute success,” Chambers explains, “one that will garner praise from [their] own clients and visitors and contribute to long-term prosperity.”

This commitment has been the reason behind Chambers’ success since its inception in 1955. Integrity and attention to quality and details set the company apart from other commercial and industrial builders in the West. “We have good working relationships with our clients [because of this],” Superintendent Don Brockmann says, “and we continue to have 80 percent of our clients as repeat customers.”

Chambers is bringing its expertise to the Rogue Valley Manor Healthcare project in Medford, Ore. Serving as the project’s general contractor, Chambers is expanding the healthcare facility to include one level of skilled nursing care and one level of residential care. The $35 million building, when completed in June 2009, will have six floors totaling 120,000 square feet. In addition to new kitchens and dining rooms, the project will include a daylight basement and a ground floor for support area, storage and physical therapy pool.

“The parent company who owns Rogue Valley is Pacific Retirement Services,” Brockmann says. “They own a building in Eugene called Cascade Manor, which we renovated and expanded in 2005. So, this again is a returning client for us.”

Its Cascade Manor project was around $14 million, and included a 70,000-square-foot expansion and renovation to the existing building in Eugene, Ore. The renovation included a new Butler steel roof system, while the expansion consisted of 50 new independent living garden apartments – 20 units in a two-story building and 30 units in a three-story building – featuring an outdoor courtyard complete with gardens, creeks, ponds and waterfalls. The expansion also included a fitness center with indoor pool, spa, locker rooms and exercise room, as well as a seven-story elevator tower that connects the new construction to the existing building.

Chambers’ Advantages
Chambers has faced a number of challenges while working on the Rogue Valley project, Project Manager Brian Erickson notes. For example, during the excavation process, Chambers had to perform rock excavation, pilings and structural fill all at the same time, he says. We dealt with this by detailed scheduling subcontractors, sometimes hourly, at different areas of the site to present.

Because the project is located on a three-acre hillside, Chambers had to “make it work and make sure everyone can work around each other,” Brockmann states. Erickson adds that “coordination was the key to overcoming this challenge.”

“Due to the configuration of the building on the hillside, one area of the first floor has a post-tension concrete slab system, slab on grade and conventional elevated slab system all within what will be the kitchen area of the building,” Erickson says.

“[There had to be] close coordination between Chambers’ superintendent and all trades, [who were] required to successfully fit all the pieces into this area.”

Additionally, building a multipurpose project brought up other, minor challenges, such as coordinating the buildings’ services. “Services such as chilled and hot water piping from the new building will be run to serve the existing building,” Erickson says.

[Also], the new healthcare building’s communications and fire alarm systems have to be interfaced with all the existing campus buildings.

Erickson stresses that Chambers brings many advantages to the project. “We have worked on past projects with the owner and the architect, where we have built a relationship of working in an open and collaborative manner to establish budgets, schedules and [how to better] solve problems,” he says.

Providing Safety and Comfort
Working on a busy healthcare campus increases safety concerns, Erickson says. “The Rogue Valley Manor is the largest continuing care retirement community in the Oregon/California region with 980 residents currently living on the campus,” he explains. “[And], the healthcare expansion project we’re building right now is in the middle of the campus.

“Our advantage is our knowledge gained by working on past retirement community projects where we have learned that the residents’ safety and comfort [are] the first priority. We issue weekly updates on the construction progress and upcoming activities to the residents, so they are prepared for any inconvenience and also to involve them in the construction process at their home.”

Going Strong
The residential construction market has taken a big hit, and Brockmann says Chambers is fortunate to be working in the commercial market. “The commercial industry is still strong in Oregon,” he says.

Some of Chambers’ current projects include:

• Mill Casino hotel expansion
• Hawes Investments LLC
• Lane County Public Health Building